New house and bugs

New house.  New bed.  New sheets.  New fan.  What more can one ask for?  Last night, after sitting down to eat two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and taking a much needed ap-naam (shower), I headed up to my room for some R&R.  I spent an hour and a half earlier this evening washing all of my clothes and attempting to find random places to hang them around my house to dry since I don’t have anywhere to really do that…it was time to relax for the night; read a book, watch some shows.  I read for a while and then sat down to watch a couple episodes of Californication. 

I’m chillin’ in my bed, my fan blowing across my face as it turns from one side of the room to the other, when I see a bug on my computer screen.  I quickly kill it (sorry, Thailand) and continue watching.  It is a short time later that I have to brush another bug off my arm, then my face, and then another two on my computer.  What is going on?  I sit up in bed.  Holy cr*p!  There are little dark spots – bugs – all over my bed.  Not just a couple, but at least 100.  Then I look up.  My entire wall by my light is coated in these little bugs hopping over one another in attempts to be the closest one to the light. 

I grabbed a pillow case I wasn’t using and quickly went to work at killing as many of these suckers that I could on my bed and brushing them off. With each swipe of the towel more bugs came to take the place of the ones I just removed. Ugh!  Not fun.  Where are they coming from?  I get up from my bed and look around.  Ever step squishes more and more bugs, grinding them into my feet.  Finally, I reach my windows, my screened windows.  Armies of tiny bugs are attacking my screens searching for an entrance to my room.  These bugs are small enough to fit through the tiny spaces in the screens and they are slowly making their ways through the open slots.

I know immediately that it is my light that is causing them to all want to enter my home.  I look out into the street and see that my light shines the brightest on the entire block.  I quickly turn off my light in hopes that will drive the bugs to my dimly lit window and out of my house.  The bugs immediately set out for my computer screen.  I turn that off.  And then, I am laying on my bed, huddled under my blanket hoping that swarms of bugs are not meeting on my bed for another attack. 

Bored.  It’s been about 30 minutes sitting in the dark.  Its about 8:30.  I’m not tired, not ready to sleep, but I can’t turn my computer back on.  Instead I decide to try a tiny flashlight and read a book.  Not even a minute into reading I already have 4 bugs roaming around the outside of my kindle.  Light out.   Time to count some sheep.

This morning:  I wake up to hundreds of dead bugs coating all surfaces of my room.  Time to do some cleaning.

Next night:  I was sooo tired from not sleeping well the night before I fell asleep at 730pm.  No bugs entered my room!!! YAY!!! And, I woke up this morning and almost all of my clothes are dry!!! Double YAY!!!

Update on the flooding:

Today, I took a couple bike rides around my Tambon with my Balot and my Ron Nayok.  We had a few days of constant rain and the water from northern Thailand if finally making its way to Bangrakam.  There are two sections of my village that now have some slight flooding with the river covering the road and houses cut off.  We were able to bike through one section where the water was about 4 inches deep but were told that we should not attempt to bike through the other part of town where the water was deeper.  Families have started to build make shift walkways 2-4 feet off the ground to battle to coming flood, but eventually, even those might not be high enough off the ground. 

When I come back from Bangkok I will attempt to take some pictures of the areas so everyone can see what is going on. 

Oh, and I now have a project to work on!!! Ovitraps to help get rid of the mosquito infestation.  We have already had at least 2 people in Bangrakam come down with Dengue so I proposed a device that another volunteer is implementing in his area.  They love the idea.  I hopefully will be part of a workshop at the end of the month to help put together the project idea and implementation of it, but if not, at least I know what I will be working on for a little while…and by then, it will be time for me to start thinking about a leadership and empowerment came that I want to do for the youth early next year…then, it will be time for the Thai Youth Theater festival that I am helping to organize…slowly but surely, I am getting more work to do.